Social Media: The Syphilitic Sailor of the Twenty First Century

I can't help wondering what use postcards are nowadays.  Once upon a time, of course, postcards served a useful purpose.  They were a cheap and convenient way of keeping in touch with people you couldn't bother writing a letter to.  Postcards were also useful for exciting the envy of others by sending pictures of the breathtaking sights you had (at least by implication) seen without resorting to the unforgivable sadism of the post holiday slide show.

Nowadays, thanks to social media the poor old postcard barely has a role left.  Now that we can inform everyone we have ever met (and thousands we would cross the street to avoid) of every bowel movement in real time there doesn't seem to be much point in buying a postcard.  Postcards will, no doubt, go the way of the dodo (eaten by syphilitic Portuguese sailors?) and soon wont be found anywhere except for the occasional stuffed specimen in a museum.  I personally don't think the dodo ever existed, the exhibits we see are just the result of some bored natural history students getting creative with some left over spare parts.

But back to postcards.  The inevitable demise of the postcard will actually be a bit of a loss for me because I do buy postcards.  I buy postcards when I'm on holidays so I don't have to bother taking photos.  The pictures in postcards are so much better than anything I could take anyway.  They have the advantage of being taken in perfect light at exactly the right time of day.  When I look at a postcard I can forget that my own experience involved fronting up at a rather grotty tourist trap at some inconvenient hour in the pouring rain surrounded by hordes of people unfamiliar with deodorant while a grubby six year threw up on my shoes.

Now I'm going to have to find some other way of remembering my holidays.  Fortunately that six year old is no doubt uploading all of his antics to facebook.